Against all Odds? - National Security Council lurking around the Corner

摘要

The word is out. Germans have started to discuss the establishment of a National Security Council (NSC) at the Federal Chancellery. An institution with a far broader range of tasks than the existing Cabinet Committee (Bundessicherheitsrat), flanked by a platform for inhouse and extra-mural analysis within the Ministry of Defense. Inspired by, yet not identical with the U.S. or British model, this NSC must integrate a vast quantum of cross-sector as well as cross-level information and opinions (as) resulting from Germany's federal constitutional setting while striving to limit the size of its institutional corpus. Given decades of total lack of political interest and even strong opposition to the project, this might seem a Hercules endeavour. But in times of hybrid warfare, massive cyber-attacks, international terrorism still lingering, hardships brought about by armed conflict and mass migration or climate change-related natural phenomena of catastrophic dimension, enhanced capacities for strategic foresight are needed in Germany. Plus, odds are that a wide spectrum from conservative to liberal and Green may find grounds to agree on in subsequent legislative periods. It was a CDU Minister of Defence recently arguing both for a European und National Security Council at various occasions, joined by the FDP in the former. Moreover, the broadness of the NSC approach encompassing environmental and development issues, might well be in line with Green thinking.